Golden Picket

Several fake news sites ran with a fabricated tale of an overweight man purportedly suing because he was booted from a buffet restaurant.

2K

CLAIM

An obese man is suing Golden Corral because he was kicked out after spending seven hours at their buffet. See Example( s )

EXAMPLES

Collected via Facebook, February 2016

FALSE

RATING

FALSE

ORIGIN

On 12 February 2016, the World News Daily Report (WNDR) web site published an article reporting a 51-year-old welfare recipient was suing Golden Corral after being ejected from one of their restaurants for spending more than seven hours at the buffet:

A man from Massachusetts is suing Golden Corral Corporation for 2 million dollars, for false advertising, after being literally thrown out of one of the chain’s restaurants by the employees, last Thursday.

According to witnesses, the 51 year old man who lives on welfare, was expelled from the restaurant after he then spent more than 7 hours on-site, ingesting a quantity of food which has been estimated between 50 and 70 pounds.

Despite the fact that the restaurant advertised the buffet as “all-you-can-eat”, the manager of the establishment seems to have lost patience at some point, telling him that his meal would be free but asking him to leave. The manager’s intervention angered Mr Fleming, and a brief altercation took place before he was finally pushed out of the restaurant.

“It’s a serious injustice, and I am deeply insulted!” Mr. Flemmings told reporters. “With my income, I rarely go to the restaurant, so I try to get as much as I can for my money when I do. This was the worst experience I have ever had in a restaurant. Not only did they kick me out while I was still hungry, but they looked at me like I was disgusting, like I was not worthy of eating there! It’s unacceptable, and I demand a compensation!”

WNDR’s article was quickly reproduced on other fake news sites such as Huzlers and LinkBeef, but there was no truth to any of the claims. The article swiped a 2014 photograph from a Daily Mailarticle about a 38-year-old Texas man’s decision to undergo weight loss surgery, and it appeared the “welfare recipient” detail was added to bolster stereotypes of laziness and excess among recipients of government assistance.

The claim also appeared to be based on a very old and well-known John Pinette joke (at about the 2:30 mark):

World News Daily Report regularly creates fabricated tales, almost invariably outrageous claims that tempt social media users to share them, thus driving traffic to the site, as their disclaimer admits:

WNDR assumes however all responsibility for the satirical nature of its articles and for the fictional nature of their content. All characters appearing in the articles in this website — even those based on real people — are entirely fictional and any resemblance between them and any persons, living, dead, or undead is purely a miracle.

Previous WNDR hoaxes claimed a baby in the Philippines was born with stigmata, a lottery winner died after trying to gold-plate his testicles, a 14-year-old virgin was impregnated by a flu shot, a slaughterhouse employee quietly killed dozens of coworkers over a span of twenty years, a donor heart recipient went on a killing spree after receiving a heart from an executed serial killer, a man’s genitals were bitten off during the attempted sexual assault of a pit bull, a meth-using babysitter ate a toddler, and a Smithsonian employee was arrested for “raping” a mummy.